**The Future of Wi-Fi: Wi-Fi 6E Routers Arrive at CES**

Announced at CES, Wi-Fi 6E routers are now available, with some models expected to hit the market as early as February this year. Wi-Fi 6E is a new standard that promises even faster speeds and more robust features than its predecessor, Wi-Fi 6. This means that users who want the latest and greatest in wireless technology will have access to these improved routers.

However, it's worth noting that Apple devices do not currently support Wi-Fi 6E, although future Apple devices are likely to include this feature. For now, users of Apple devices may need to look elsewhere for a Wi-Fi 6E router. But if they want a future-proof solution, there are some great options available.

**Lynx iQAM Velop Mesh Network System**

One company that is pushing the boundaries of Wi-Fi mesh networking with its latest release is Lynx. The company has announced a 6E version of its popular Velop system, which will be available soon. As someone who already owns one of these routers, I can attest to their incredible performance. My Lyus Velop Wi-Fi 6 router mesh network system has been a game-changer for me, providing fast speeds even when I'm connected via Ethernet on my Apple devices.

However, the Lynx Velop system is not inexpensive, and users may need to shell out some serious cash to get multiple nodes working together seamlessly. But if you're looking for a high-quality Wi-Fi mesh network solution with great performance and features like HomeKit integration, the Lynx Velop system is definitely worth considering.

**Other Options: Netgear Orbeez System**

Another company that offers a range of Wi-Fi mesh network solutions is Netgear. The company's Orbeez system has gotten some positive reviews in the past, but since it was acquired by Amazon, there have been some concerns about privacy and security. However, if you're looking for a HomeKit-enabled router, the Lynx Velop system is still the way to go.

That being said, the Netgear Orbeez system does offer some great features and performance, and it's definitely worth considering if you're in the market for a new Wi-Fi mesh network solution. Just be sure to do your research and understand any potential trade-offs when it comes to security and privacy.

**A Day in the Life: Losing Internet Connection**

I recently experienced a frustrating day at home, where I lost my internet connection due to some work outside that caused workers to cut through cables. I was in the middle of a Zoom conference for Apple Insider, which added an extra layer of stress to the situation. But despite the chaos, I was able to get back online and continue with the rest of my day.

The experience highlighted just how important it is to have a reliable internet connection, especially when you're working remotely or participating in video conferencing. And for those who use mesh networking systems like Lynx's Velop or Netgear's Orbeez, having multiple nodes working together seamlessly can make all the difference in maintaining a stable connection.

**The Verdict: Wi-Fi Mesh Networking is the Way to Go**

In the end, whether you choose to go with Lynx's Velop system or another option like Netgear's Orbeez, one thing is clear: Wi-Fi mesh networking is the way to go for anyone who wants fast and reliable internet connectivity. With its ability to provide coverage throughout a large home or office, mesh networking systems are becoming increasingly popular among users.

And with the arrival of Wi-Fi 6E routers, users can expect even faster speeds and more robust features than ever before. So if you're in the market for a new router or system, be sure to do your research and consider all the options available. With the right solution, you'll be enjoying fast and reliable internet connectivity in no time.

**Recommendations**

For those who are looking for a future-proof Wi-Fi mesh network solution with great performance and features like HomeKit integration, I highly recommend Lynx's Velop system. It's not inexpensive, but it's worth every penny if you're serious about getting the best possible performance out of your wireless connection.

If you're on a budget or prefer to stick with more affordable options, Netgear's Orbeez system is still a great choice. Just be sure to do your research and understand any potential trade-offs when it comes to security and privacy.

And if you don't already have Wi-Fi mesh networking set up at home or in the office, I'd definitely recommend giving it a try. With its ability to provide fast and reliable internet connectivity throughout a large space, mesh networking systems are becoming increasingly popular among users.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome to the Apple Insider podcast this episode is brought to you by Amazon Pharmacy learn more at amazon.com appleinsider RX and we're brought to you by headspace get a free one-month trial when you go to headspace.com slapple Insider and finally the nebia by Mo and Spa shower get 15% off nebia products right now if you go to neb.com slapple Insider welcome to the Apple Insider podcast this is your host Steven roblas and joining me this week is my Apple Fitness Plus partner in crime from across the pond William Gallagher right I I was going to ask is it too late to say happy new year but after that Apple Fitness dig no forget it hello that's all you're getting well I'll say Happy New Year to you and uh we are friends on on activity but I've not been following it I will I will admit fully here on the podcast I've done Apple Fitness plus you can count on one hand the amount of times I've done it this year it's it's not been very much how about you okay you can count on two two fingers two fingers okay that's more than one that's pretty good for very good reasons I have been much more active so far this year I've been filling out those exercise circles and I Will Not Waste an exercise Circle by doing more than it said it's not the target it's the limit now now by more activity is it like rolling the chair around the office or is there something else you're doing here uh I'm sure how could you accuse me of I found a way to cheat would you believe but do I share it with you or not you can keep it a mystery I won't press you okay it might involve a local dog running around but that's very good very good well nice to have you for this episode in 2021 so let's touch on some of the news you know this past week Tim Cook actually said on CBS on the morning show that he had a big announcement coming they announced what apple is going to be doing in regards to R equality and justice what they're going to be investing in some new initiatives and so I'll touch on a couple key points William had the article and so I let him go into a little more details but they're contributing $25 million to create a Propel Center in conjunction with Southern Company that's going to be in Atlanta University Center of 50,000 ft space for learning labs and lecture Halls they're also going to open an apple developer Academy in Detroit this is the first time a company has created a training center in collaboration with Michigan State University they're hoping for a th000 students annually and they're also investing $10 million with New York's Harlem Capital which aims to support a th new companies over the next two decades help entrepreneurs and so these are awesome initiatives in the renderings in the article of the buildings that they're contributing to these are some beautiful buildings so you had the article what any more details you have on that there's one detail I'm actually oddly not sure about and not able to find out from Apple yet although we are asking uh the 100 million that they're spending now can't tell if it's on top of the 100 million that they pledged in I think it was June 2020 or whether this is um the Fulfillment of that uh But whichever it is the thing that I like most about is that none of it is one off donate to charity take the qos and run it's all about starting things that are intended to run the developer Academy in Detroit they're expecting to have uh get up to about a thousand students every year and it isn't for just one year isn't for two it's just you that's it long as it keeps running and uh also actually speaking of Detroit the fact that they're uh they're opening that but just before they open it uh they are holding um like a virtual um passing out cery I can't think of the right phrase uh for the first cohort that went through its uh entrepreneur camp for black Founders and developers it was a started a few months ago and it's come to fruition and now they're on to other things so I I like this business of these are important things and we are in it for the long haul that's what I plus those renders of the Propel Center they look amazing you want to go there don't yes I do it it does it looks beautiful so they'll link to show notes to this it'll be the first one in those links and you can check out the renderings but very cool and just awesome that apple is contributing those things in various areas well this week was also CES 2021 Andrew O'Hara at Apple Insider I think he has like a 100 hours of Zoom calls logged because that's what CES was this year was just all Zoom calls and press releases and obviously a lot of devices were announced and a lot of accessories check out The homekit Insider episode coming Mondays we talk about a lot of the home stuff that was announced there was actually a lot of devices there but I want to touch on just two or three of the products that I really found interesting that was announced at CES one LG announced the first OLED 4K Ultra fine display and I'm going to talk about my experience with ultrafine because I actually have one now and a new desk setup I'm going to talk about in a few minutes but LG announc its first OLED 4K Ultra fine display so this display from LG is 31 1/2 in which is very similar to Apple's Pro display xdr which is 32 in so same physical dimensions but this display from LG is 4K Apple's Pro display xdr is 6k so if you're looking for that retina quality High pixel density screen and a large screen size this is not going to be competing with that Pro display xdr just yet but if you're good with 4K and you want to try out the new OLED technology this one from LG looks pretty good and I will say LG's displays are pretty nice uh as I'll talk about in a moment but that was interesting also these were really cool ankor unveiled a new accessory lineup they have some mag safe cases they're going to be releasing and some mag safe charging stands but one of the cool things that they announced were these battery packs that will actually attach to the back of your iPhone 12 via magsafe and it can wirelessly charge your phone through that connection and I thought that was really cool you know I was wondering if someone was going to do this soon and Anor seems the first one to Market and so I've you know used portable battery packs in the past some from ankor some from Mofi but to be able to just slap a battery pack onto the back of your iPhone and it's charging it immediately you don't need you don't need any cables or need to worry about that I thought that was pretty cool so those some interesting accessories there I actually really fancy that I've just got I was given for Christmas a MAG safe thing and the so satisfying the sound as it Go the physical sound and then the the the note that apple pays they chose that well it's really you just like doing it but yeah a lot of Anchor batteries things I have one right next to me uh that I rely on back in the days when we used to travel so been able to do this oh wait a minute this is at CES nothing at CES ever actually comes out does it really no no wait a minute wait a minute I mean anchor is pretty reputable I feel like true I trust them yes yeah this is not a it's not vaporware just yet but and then this last thing I want toh talk about you know Wes was excited about this this thing looks really cool Kensington announced the studio dock for iPad Pro and iPad Air the new version of the air and this thing it looks really sweet so it basically looks like the stand for Apple's Pro display xdr it's like that nice aluminum looking clean looking stand and then what it has is a place for you to make magnetically attach your iPad and connect it via the USBC port and then this stand has many other ports that are now available to the iPad it also has a chi charging pads for your phone and airpods right at the base of the stand but then on the back of this stand from Kensington there's like usba a ports HDMI if you want to connect a display headphone jack and then an ethernet port as well so if you use your iPad for work mainly you really enjoy working from that and Wes Hillyard he was on the show last week he works from iPad first this thing looks really sweet it's not available yet you can go on the website I'll put a link in show notes and you can sign up to be made notified when it is available but it looks really sweet you can also rotate an iPad horizontal and vertical on the Kensington stand and so again connecting it to an external monitor plus all the other connections on the stand looks pretty sweet so you know when I'm finally to send my iPad Pro to you William I you might be interested in this I was building up to asking you about that again but now your head I'm getting there closer yes you've G you've gas lit me enough gas lighted gas lit me enough whichever one of those but uh very cool very cool device and so again you could sign up to be notified there so I'll put links and show notes to those products again a lot of stuff at CES announced not available just yet some of their homekit products are available like vocal link humidifier and things like that again check out The homekit Insider episode Monday for some of those specific devices and links and show notes to what I talked about just now this episode is brought to you by Amazon Pharmacy listener let me tell you I literally order from Amazon all the time especially during this time of pandemic and staying home I think that Amazon Prime guy is at my house almost every day and I did not know about this but Amazon actually has an Amazon pharmacy program where you can get your prescriptions and medic s delivered directly to your door Amazon Pharmacy is super easy to use you can have your doctor's office just send your prescription straight to Amazon Pharmacy and it will be delivered right to your door you can use your insurance and Amazon Pharmacy works with most insurance plans Nationwide and Amazon Prime members get free two-day delivery and you can save on prescription medications when paying without insurance maybe your insurance doesn't cover it or you don't have the insurance right now you can save on those prescriptions with an Amazon Prime membership I've worked with my doctors and healthc Care Professionals to send prescriptions to Amazon Pharmacy and it's super easy they send it on and then you get the medication directly to your door Amazon Pharmacy will coordinate with your doctor to receive the prescriptions and it's just as convenient as shopping on Amazon for everything else it's one less errand you don't have to go to the pharmacy you don't have to drop off a prescription or go pick it up it arrives at your door and you're done it works with most insurance plans Nationwide and again when you're that Amazon Prime member you get free two-day delivery and savings on prescription medications when you're paying without insurance they make it very easy to see the difference paying with and without insurance when you check out so you have all the information visible and easy to understand again Amazon Prime members you can save on prescription medications when not using insurance and get free two-day delivery learn more at amazon.com slapple inssider RX that's all one word am a z n amazon.com appleinsider RX amazon.com appleinsider RX to try out Amazon Pharmacy our thanks to Amazon Pharmacy for sponsoring this episode I want to discuss my new desk setup and so last week I was talking to Wes Hillyard and trying to figure out I want to be able to dock my M1 MacBook Pro and use it obviously as a laptop away from the desk but then have a nice desk setup with mouse keyboard and the large display was trying to figure out what display I wanted to get you know contemplating what's best to use with a Mac so I actually got all the stuff in between last episode and now and I currently have the 4K LG ultra fine display I got one renewed I mentioned it on last week's episode you can get them on Amazon refurbished or renewed basically new to me is someone that looks great and there's no blemishes no spots on it so it looks great so I'm using the LG ultra fine 4K at that's 24 in and then I also got the bridge vertical dock bridge is BR r y dge the bridge vertical dock for the 13-in MacBook Pro which the bridge dock is really cool cuz it has two Thunderbolt 3 ports coming out the back of the dock so when you put your MacBook Pro in it you still get two ports coming out just like if you were connecting it directly to your Macbook so that's cool and so I have one cable going to the LG ultra fine and then I have another where I can put a dock for all the other connections that I need so I have the LG ultrafine 4K the vertical Bridge Dock and then been trying out various keyboards and mouse combinations and I'll talk about that in a minute but I have to say it is really nice to just be able to take my MacBook Pro out of my bag stick it in the vertical Dock and I'm immediately feels like I'm at sitting at a desktop computer I have my mouse keyboard and all that big display and everything's connected that I need to and it's been really nice so we had a listener suggest you know other monitors Wes and I were trying to figure out what are the best monitors to use with the Mac listener recommended a Ben Q monitor a design view which does look really nice I'll put a link in show notes to that but I went with the LG ultra fine it's nice because there's all USBC ports on the back two of them being Thunderbolt so I've attached things like that whether I need to charge or just an accessory and it's been great I will say the bridge vertical dock when I initially hooked it up to the LG ultra fine I put my MacBook Pro in there and you know I was expecting it to be really really precise as far as putting the MacBook in and like not being much wiggle room but there is a gap between the MacBook Pro and kind of the edge around this part of the dock so it's not like super airtight fit but it's pretty secure and then the vertical dock it actually has this piece inside that goes up and down it like moves up and down when you put your MacBook in and I was unsure how far down I needed to push it in order for the two USBC port to connect to the connections in the dock and so when I first tried it I thought I put it all the way down but it wasn't connecting to the LG display so I had to take the MacBook out connect it directly to the display make sure everything was working and then I found that the bridge vertical dock when you put your MacBook Pro in it you kind of push it down pretty firmly and then you hear a click which means that both of those ports are now in the MacBook Pro 13in and it is connected and then it pops up on the LG ultra fine and all that so that was just a little if you do get a bridge vertical dock you know don't be afraid to kind of push down on it a little firmly to make sure it actually makes the connection but it's been a nice experience I've enjoyed sitting at a desk and feeling like I have a desktop Mac uh there is where one obvious thing missing uhhuh what's that a photograph you can't just dangle all this you want see it in action sounds great yes very good let me send you if I'm particularly taken with that business about uh the dock not being very firm for it cuz aren't there some where you buy it but then there are like little inserts to fit whether you've got an MacBook Air or MacBook Pro or something is that I I thinking of a completely different well for this bridge sells a dock for every specific size so if you're going to buy a vertical dock from bridge you have to tell it what year and what model and what size so if you have a 16-inch MacBook Pro that's a different dock that you would purchase from the drop down if you have a 13-in air as opposed to a pro that's a different vertical dock so it is very specific to your model and it doesn't come with any inserts it's just you screw in the bottom base plate and you're good to go and that's it and so I just sent you a picture William so you can see the setup yes and uh you appear to work in an Apple store that's what this looks like to me if you got one of those great desks well this is a desk of a co-working space I'm actually at so it is not a home office per se yeah it's a it's a co-working space which and time of pandemic has actually been pretty quiet so it is kind of an ideal situation but that that's the setup now so some quirks though as I have explored this setup you know I've seen people tweeting about Bluetooth issues on M1 Max and I thought they were all crazy because I was not experiencing it but it's because I wasn't trying to connect multiple bluetooth devices simultaneously to my M1 MacBook Pro so when I tried this setup for the first time I was using a Bluetooth magic keyboard a Bluetooth Magic Mouse and then I tried to connect my airpods Max to the MacBook and no dice just circled and circled would not connect for anything even restarting the MacBook I wasn't able to get them all to connect at the same time and even between the keyboard and the mouse I had some connectivity intermittent issues where I would lose connection to the mouse sometimes and that was pretty frustrating and this was like the first time I was using it this was not like it worked great for a couple days and then I experienced this this was like day one Bluetooth issues with this setup so Apple has said that they're going to be releasing a fix in Mac OS Big Sir coming very soon but I will say it makes this setup actually kind of difficult to use at times with the magic keyboard I can connect it directly with a lightning to USBC cable if I want to connect the keyboard directly I don't have a magic Trackpad at this desk so I can't as you all well know I can't plug in the Magic Mouse and use it at the same time because charging port is conveniently placed on the underside of the Magic Mouse so there are sometimes like I I have to choose what Bluetooth device I'm going to connect if I have connect with the magic mouse sometimes I have to use my airpods Macs with like my iPad and listen to something through there because it just will not connect to the Macbook so the Bluetooth is definitely an issue when you're trying to connect multiple devices and Hope hopefully that fix comes very soon I know there's betas released for Big Sir recently but yeah that that can be a frustrating other than the Bluetooth issues I will say it is really nice the other thing is with Touch ID you know obviously when I'm using my MacBook with just as the computer not docked the touch ID is super convenient for logging in and passwords Apple pay all that kind of stuff when it's docked like that sometimes I can use the Apple watch to authenticate so when I want to unlock it it will use the Apple watch that I'm wearing and it'll unlock automatically and I don't have to put in the password but for some apps like one password where would normally just ask for my fingerprint to unlock one password I actually have to type in the password because there is no like Apple watch connection where I can unlock one password with my Apple watch so you know you lose that touch ID convenience in some situations I would still love to see one day I don't know if this is even possible but a magic keyboard with Touch ID or some kind of Authentication where you can have that even with the lid closed and be able to use that on something like an iMac as well if face ID doesn't come first to that so that's a little Quirk there but overall I do I like the setup and it's been working well I'm kind of a much more a software guy than a hardware one but I I visited an engineer once does a Keo thing really interesting guy terribly interesting product and he took me through I think actually just gave me a sort of surface guide but it felt like an in-depth guide to precisely how hard Bluetooth tooth is to work and the standards that vary and all this it just it came thinking this is alchemy it is not why do we have to have this nonsense how did it become this fragile thing that is cu I have Bluetooth issues uh just randomly and I I I don't I'm wondering now if it's multiple devices because I I didn't know that was the M1 problem I'm going to have to check out what I'm doing with this but it appeared to be just you in the middle of a sentence my cuboard will go nah not going to bother with that right and then come back later when want it so okay yeah throw sugar over your shoulder and get wired uh devices okay noted right yes exactly and that's you know if I get a magic Trackpad I could use it but I actually don't prefer the magic Trackpad over the mouse when I'm using a desktop which which do you prefer you like the trackpad or you go with the mouse the trackpad bu a incredibly long way uh I find mice really quite awkward to use I get that you can be more precise you know pixel for Pixel clicking with the eyes but even when I'm doing uh basic illustration work I don't need it I find the the magic trap pad is just amazing when I go to a Mac that has even an older trackpad uh I miss it plus I am a veteran of the hockey puck Mouse I used it on one for one day at the BBC and everybody was looking at me waiting to it was like this hot desk spare Mac and all of the art department and this magazine were waiting for me to swear so I used it because yeah it was a right of passage at this time and and I did and it was horrible so that put me off mice me 20 years ago um and then I found the trackpad about 10 years ago and I just cannot go back to it at all so you can I'll keep my trackpad you keep the mouse but we'll still do the deal about the iPad you take the high road I'll take the low road no but I like the trackpad a lot and obviously I use it on my MacBook Pro I love that trackpad but I found sitting at a desk using a trackpad for an extended period of time especially if I'm editing a video I found like my hand I don't know I would I would have this tension in my hand trying to like hold my hand above the trackpad constantly and only put my fingers down when I meant to and it just I not carpal tunnel or RSI maybe it was an RSI thing but using the trackpad for an extended period of time I just found it it not comfortable for my hands so it was more of a comfort thing you know I do like how many multif figured gestures you get with the trackpad four fingers three fingers and all that and I use all those on my my MacBook but something about that video editing with a magic Trackpad I it just didn't uh didn't work for me so that's why I'm sticking with the uh the mice no no no hang on a second but you audio edit on an iPad so you must be constantly touching and dragging there and yet you don't feel that same uh tension well it's all apple pencil on there oh I see I just I'm thinking assuming it's p right okay that's very swish sitting in a in a coffee shop your artistic apple pencil at your hand dabbing away at the screen and editing audio that's right that's the life it we I want to go back to doing that yes it it is nice and that's you know this co-working space that I'm at again because there's not many people around now I do have the couches at my choice and I could sit there and edit a podcast and it's nice and I look like an artist cuz I'm using a pencil but I'm not you just I'm editing a podcast this episode is brought to you by headspace well we're in a new year but it's looking like there's still some stressful events going on in our world today and maybe you made a New Year's resolution to not watch the news as much or to help you get de-stressed or not feel so overwhelmed well let me tell you from personal experience that I highly recommend you try headspace to add that mindfulness to your day and help relieve some of that stress you may be feeling headspace is your daily dose of mindfulness in the form of guided meditations in an easyto use app and listen if you're intimidated by the word meditation let me tell you I had not done it before until I use the headspace app one it's an awesome app beautifully designed easy to use walks you through every step and it eases you in teaching you how to do it and it has been incredibly valuable to my daily life headspace is one of the only meditation apps advancing the field of mindfulness and meditation through clinically validated research so whatever your situation headspace can really help you feel better if you feel overwhelmed headspace has a 3-minute SOS meditation for you it's just 3 minutes super easy to do maybe you need help falling asleep well headspace has a wind down session that members swear by and for parents headspace even has morning meditations you can do with your kids heads space's approach to mindfulness can reduce stress improve sleep boost focus and increase your overall sense of well-being and I want to tell you personally that I can get overwhelmed at times when I look at my to-do list especially in the morning and if that list just got longer overnight I'm checking emails in the morning taking those few minutes right at the start of the day can really help put your mind at ease help you get ready to focus on that task list and you can approach the day not starting stressed out and it makes such a difference heads space is back by 25 published studies on its benefits 600,000 f-star reviews and over 60 million downloads headspace makes it easy for you to build a life-changing meditation practice with mindfulness that works for you on your schedule anytime and anywhere you deserve to feel happier and headspace is meditation Made Simple go to headspace.com slapple Insider that's headspace just like it sounds.com slapple Insider for a free one-month trial you can try it for an entire month and you get access to heads space's full library of meditations for every situation including those beginner type lessons to really get you acclimated to mindfulness and meditation this is the best deal offered right now go to headspace.com slapple inssider today our thanks to headspace for sponsoring this episode so I also wanted to mention is we were talking about devices with mag safe and charging you know Andrew O'Hara reviewed the Belin 3 in1 mag safe charger and I couldn't resist I I picked one up and just real quick I have to say it is really sweet I had the magsafe duo where you can charge your iPhone and Apple watch from Apple it's Apple's product but man the belon 3 in one really takes ma safe to the next level I wasn't sure how I would like my phone just kind of d Ling in midair because of the mag safe the belcon one it's like kind of high up and your phone is just not vertical it's at maybe like a 30° angle or something but it is super secure my phone stays on there charging overnight and I don't worry about it coming off at all you can put it vertical or horizontal on that charging plate and that's pretty sweet the Apple watch same thing it hangs up there in midair but really secure the magnets charges overnight and then it has that third place for your airpods or airpods Pro where you can charge it via cheat charging right there on the base so yeah I have to say it's a really sweet and I understand why Andrew gave it a five out of five stars so if you haven't gotten that mag safe Duo and you want to get mag safe a MAG safe charger for your nightstand or maybe your desk and you're looking at the different options that belon 3 in one is really sweet the white one is in stock and ships pretty quickly I got mine in just a couple days uh the there's a black version coming but I think that's February shipping time uh for that so that's pretty cool so you said you got a MAG safe thing for Christmas you get the puck I got the the apples kind of regular uh on so they're quite long lead and uh uh yeah the puck thing for it which is currently by my bed but I had it by my desk for a bit and and now I kind of want them in both spots so maybe I have buy the Belin thing you might have to though you were really quick getting it I mean I last I heard they were delayed and then suddenly they were out and you got one straight away that's oh Apple must love you isn't it service it's Steven send it down that's right ship it wait no it was I bought it through the Apple Store and so I think that was the trick you know there was wasn't sure if it was going to be available January 8th if it was going to be delayed and so I just checked the Apple Store January 8th when it was rumored to be available and boom it was there and then you know if you switch between the black and white color in the Apple Store app you do see the shipping times change the black one was like 3 to four weeks so went over to the white and got like next day shipping so if you want it check it out in the Apple Store yeah it's pretty nice uh it doesn't appear to be available in the UK Apple store yet unfortunately oh okay sorry across the pond there tantalized again yeah now what is the status currently on the physical Apple stores in the UK are they all still closed they're all closed um and um I don't believe there's an exception for Apple but most places are not even doing click and collect uh at the moment so it's just shuttered completely uh not for very much longer well in theory uh about February the 15th I think it is that uh things are supposed to come out of lockdown again but we don't know if that'll be extended further unfortunately gotcha well yeah I'm sorry for those I know I saw you know a couple weeks ago that everything was shutting down and so they haven't given like a estimated things might open up at this time you said February 15th uh Apple hasn't said anything they're just following uh government guidelines uh the trouble is I don't mean to knock the government here but the guidelines change so I mean from day to day they are radically different to the extent that we're kind of numb to it now and it's just uh we check in the morning can we go out yet no and carry on I I think it's highly likely that the lockdown will continue further than the 14th or 15 whichever one it is but officially we're still expected to be free of it by then gotcha I was having such a lovely time talking about key charges and um ma safe and now you have to bring in the real world sorry sorry I know well we'll talk about the real world again later because you say you want to talk bad about your government we had quite a number of events over here in the US and how that relates to technology is interes yeah you may have heard you may have heard maybe but before we get to all that iOS 14.4 beta a new beta was released and we talk about on the H kid Insider as well but if you have a homepod mini which I know you do William or at least your wife does I don't know if you guys share it does she share it with you or does she say don't touch my homepod I I think I told you I was buying her one for Christmas I I caved and gave it to her early cuz I got it straight away right and it was in my office and I just couldn't do it I had to give it to her so then obviously had to think about a new Christmas present and actually she separately got a home po Min from someone else so we have two um and we have discovered the Delights of uh intercom through it through th those two that are around the house and the hom pod next to me and we finding that remarkably useful so yes very keen on anything to do with homepod minis uh I now want one for the kitchen but you know there's a limit you got to stop somewhere sure I definitely want to hear about that your intercom experience too that's that's very interesting but with iOS 14.4 beta there is an update for the homepod mini that will be coming that utilizes the U1 Ultra wideband chip in both the homepod mini and the iPhone 12s I believe the iPhone 11s also have the U1 Ultra wideband and you'll be able to hand off audio from your phone to homod mini and back much more quickly more secure and easily and using the ultra wideband so when 14.4 comes out publicly if you have a homepod mini and an iPhone 11 or 12 should try off that handoff feature Andrew has an article and a video talking about that so I'll put that in show notes and also in iOS 14.4 there was updates to the find my app and there's a new splash screen when you open find my for the first time in iOS 14.4 and it talks about the ability to include other devices into the fine my app and again with the long rumored and still waiting to hear about air tags there's actually a URL scheme that was discovered where if you put in like the Safari web browser on your iPhone and you type find my colon backb SL items into Safari it triggers a URL scheme that opens the find my app to a find my items screen so right now if you open the find my app and you're on the public release of 14.3 you know you could see other members of your family or other friends that you may have accepted to share location with and you can see your devices in there and this looks like it's going to be adding additional items even third part party items Belin is actually going to be using this tracking service so they'll be included in the fine my the new belon wireless earbuds you'll be able to use it in the find my app so it really looks like this air tags that one day will hopefully come out sometime soon and so we can stop talking about when they're going to come or if they're going to come but I find it interesting I would look forward to having these kinds of devices maybe tile could even integrate with this in 14.4 so you can see your tile items in the f my app I think that'd be pretty cool so you said you've been using intercom on your homepod Minis and I'm curious how is that experience been what is your like starting phrase for when you're wanting to send a message from homepod mini to homepod mini and how does it come across how's that been working for you um I know there are always direct an intercome to a particular um home mini but I can't I can never remember what that is so I just say the magic words and then intercom and whatever want or I tried it the one time I went outside had to go essential Journey under lockdown when I was coming back uh I was using uh my wife car has carplay and I was couldn't resist it I tried into come through that and just told her I was on the way back and I did that by saying an ounce to everyone and it worked for it um I it's silly to think that we're not exactly in a big house but the walls are pretty thick so it's very handy to be able to just say be odd thing like the bath is ready or food's coming or whatever um and have know that it's got there we had a bit of an issue that um uh I was trying to record something and I got an intercom announcement through the homepod here so I actually read a feature for an apple Insider on how to stop that happening temporarily you know like make your own do not disturb for homepod or homepod mini but other than that it's been um just it's like it's become part of our normal existence very quickly wow so yes it's been remarkable considering that I couldn't stand the old walkie-talkie over what is for the that reason that it was forever interrupting when you in places you really didn't want to be interrupted uh I'm I'm I surprised I even tried intercom but now that I have uh utterly sold do you guys ever reply after an intercom is sent and how do you do that oh it's no point yes we often do uh oh I think what we do is I know there is a direct reply function but we just tend to say intercom again uh because although supposed there are three homeb two homeb me there's only two of us in the house for it um and I phones and things if we just basically announce the reply and know that we'll get it yes I should be doing a direct reply to whatever device has been sending it okay you see there's more to explore in this and I'm already used to it as it is okay thanks i' I've only used it a couple times but I don't know I always forget exactly what to say so I guess you kind of have to use it regularly to get used to it so I might I might try that I see the intercom option everywhere even on my Apple watch you know if you open the home app you see that intercom thing at the top so yeah I'm going have to try that soon I think it's interesting that I can't remember what you have to say and neither can you but in your case it's CU you haven't used it mine it's because it's become become second nature I'm not using it enough I should change it but yeah definitely try it out and join us you're right I thought I thought you could say like broadcast you know like so hey Dingus broadcast and then say something after that well I know there's hey Iris that's say away I'm going to say that rather than Dingus hey Iris Iris intercome uh or announce I think there's also a tell I think there was one time when a message I I sent the message began with Angela's name um and it said I can't send it to a particular person or something like that and there's one point where actually as a gag Angela sent me a text uh saying she needed the the URL for a zoom meeting and I couldn't resist it I I sent her an intercom announcement and I said over it h easy to just tell you https colon on slashers and I was only going to go a few letters into it and then admit yeah you know how long Zoom links are and I thought this would be fun stop looking at me it was funny at the time except for some reason uh the intercom did not relay that message at all didn't just stop after I spoke and began the the URL it didn't relay the message at all so she came up about 10 minutes later going duh where's the frustr me actually cuz it did there's no like cue to tell you it stopped listening really no there's another yet another nice Apple sound when it begins listening but then you just stop and look at it for a moment or at least I used to it first now I say it and my mind's gone back to whatever else I'm working on until or if I get a reply right right for sure interesting well I'll try more often we'll report back next time we're on together this episode is brought to you by the nebba by Moen Spa shower you've heard me talk about nebia before and I've been using the SP shower for months now and I absolutely love it from the design to the spa-like experience in the shower this thing is incredible nebia started in Mexico City where water shortages were a big problem they came to Silicon Valley to raise money and Tim Cook was one of nebba's First Investors the Apple CEO nebia was developed by former Tesla apple and NASA Engineers to create a superior shower experience while saving water and get this nebia has currently saved over 75 million gallons of water so let me tell you about the shower the nebby Moen Spa shower is incredibly easy to install I'm not a very do-it-yourself guy but the instructions they give you with all the right parts and pieces it really only took me about 15 minutes to swap out my old shower with the nebie B Mo and Spa shower it looks beautiful it comes in several different finishes I have the nickel fingerprint resistant finish and it just looks great in the shower but the best part is the shower experience I have the nebia B Mo and spot shower and the wand that comes with it and it just envelops you with water it's really like a spa-like experience and I got this term from them the thermal Comfort level meaning how hot it gets is great even my kids love it they've been using it just as long as I have and they never get tired of that shower experience I love that it's height adjustable so you can raise and lower that top shower head you can even go to nebba's website and they have a calculator that will tell you based on your location how much you will save in money when using the nebia B Spa shower because it saves water and saves you money it actually saves 45% of water compared to other standard showers but it has two times greater coverage and this is nebba's most advanced and affordable shower yet starting at just $1.99 again the nibia B Mo and Spa shower comes in four finishes and you can also get this really cool shower shelf to match you can hang your little lofas and sponges and put your shampoos on top of it it looks great so right now there's 15% off nebia products for list listeners of the Apple Insider podcast nebia doesn't usually do sales so this is a great opportunity to jump on it go to neb.com slapple Insider take a look at all their products and then use the coupon code Apple Insider all one word when checking out that's nebia neb a.com slapple Insider and then use the promo code Apple Insider when you check out our thanks to nibia for sponsoring this episode and so I wanted to point out these funny things from Samsung Samsung announced their new S21 Galaxy phone lines and a couple hilarious points one when Samsung tweeted about the unpacked event the promotion they tweeted it from an iPhone and I feel like social media managers and PR people everywhere for some reason still do not understand that when you tweet from a device you can see on Twitter what device was used to tweet that thing and so this tweet the Samsung unpacked event such and such it was tweeted January 13 2021 with Twitter for iPhone and this is just hilarious I know there's actually been cases in the past I think it was Oprah and somebody else they were talking about how much they love the Microsoft Surface and then they you know love this other thing and it's tweeted from iPhone it's like you know we just know the truth we know for some reason when it's an announcement like this and you know it's a PR Company that did it I'm kind I feel for them because it's like you know they're doing their job and they just didn't think about this bit but when it's a celebrity endorsement and they're gushing about how much they like something and then in the next unless they're trying to send us a coded message the fact that they are not using that uh I'm under duress yes it is maybe they're trying to say that they're in danger I don't know also with Samsung releasing these new phones The Verge and others actually confirmed that even after Apple announced that no power brick was coming with the iPhone 12's and Samsung saying oh no we include our power brick we're not like those guys now with the S21 line it's confirmed that Samsung is also leaving out the power brick from their phone boxes so again just a hilarious the thing the sole thing that youan you could almost put a clock on how long it is between Samsung mocking and Samsung emulating but where is Samsung TV plus that's the one thing I thought they the money to get into and yet they we're just leaving that one alone for now yeah I I mean I'll be honest I don't know I don't want to see a a Samsung Galaxy TV plus content I don't know what that would be it would be all reality shows no I don't know but that would be no thank you no thank you well speaking of stuff that was happening in the US last week and up till now how it relates to technology you know I want to talk about parlor just for a moment parlor is the social network that came about just recently at probably earlier this year maybe last year but is largely conservatives and conservative talk show host posts and personalities on there and they struggled with moderation meaning they were not moderating a lot of comments and there was a lot of dangerous comments and violence inducing comments talking about just really terrible things so the app Apple and Google actually told parlor that unless they start instituting stronger moderation practices that they were going to be taken out of the app store and they did not change the moderation practices parlor didn't even after the January 6th event here in the capital of Washington DC and so Apple and Google removed parlor from the app stor so you cannot download parlor if you did not already have it on your phone even at the time of this recording at the end of this week so January 15th you cannot get parlor downloaded from the app store or Google Play Store but even more so even though it was removed from the App Stores if you if someone had it on their phone they could continue to use it until and Amazon who runs the AWS Amazon web services parlor was using Amazon as the backend to power the app and all the servers Amazon made the same threat meaning you know change your moderation or we're going to shut it down again without changing Amazon also followed through just like Apple and Google but this time shutting down parlor Amazon web services meaning even with the app on your phone when you opened it there was nothing there because the web services is the back end was non-existent Amazon shut it down and so parlor is trying to sue Amazon with this you know because they took away or censorship and they are trying to find another service provider for the back server side stuff I just found this incredibly interesting and then you know talking to certain people seeing people comment on the internet there's really confusion on you know what is censorship which we won't get into a ton here but also like what companies did what I heard some people even say like apple shut down parlor because the headlines on the internet talking about Apple removing parlor from the App Store was somehow larger in the mind space of people and so they immediately assumed that Apple shut down parlor where in all honesty while they removed it from the app store they couldn't shut down the service it was actually Amazon who did because the web services were shut down so I just find it interesting the the confusion and kind of where blame goes in situations like this when people don't really understand like how an internet service or social network like parlor actually functions what it needs to function as far as like the web services side so it was an interesting tale there but it again is still shut down still you cannot download it from the app store or Google Play Store at the moment of this recording just interesting overall how that uh all went down well I think perhaps because I'm in the UK I had not even heard of paror until all of this broke and that makes me interested to how uh you know that we're all siloed in listening to the news that we're interested in or that we like or that says what we want to hear but that's an example where the existence of uh a new service if you like uh a messaging service of a particular persuasion uh totally escaped me because it's not something I'd ever use and I was quite shocked that something so big could be around that even I thought I was aware of these things and I'd missed it all so I I understand people not understanding if you see what I mean the whole chain of things suppose it's not anybody's job to know that AWS Powers everything but I think if one is um concerned enough to be angry about something one should be concerned enough to find out about it uh rather than just take the face value thing yeah I agree and just as a correction parlor actually was founded in 2018 so it's like two plus years old but it really just Rose to dominance or at least into the like public conversation in this last year because of all that's been going on here in the US and as of December 2020 before it was shut down it had about 2.3 million active users which you know if you compare that to the active Twitter users Twitter has about 36 million daily active users so you know nowhere near as big as even Twitter and then again you know Facebook over a billion users and all that so relatively small but definitely made a lot of noise at least here in the US so one last thing about parlor this was interesting Gizmodo had a report that was was actually showing the Geo tagged posts that people were posting to parlor on January 6 at and inside the capital building now again you know when we talk about privacy and security this is one of those things that you don't think about until after the fact but parlor did not encrypt the geolocation data for posts and even if you were to delete a post parlor was only marking that post as deleted it wasn't removing that post from its servers and so all the Geo data from Posts that were made on parlor on January 6th from people at the Capitol Building actually it was mapped by Gizmodo where you can see all these little red dots of people posting to parlor that day during the riots and you know during the people as as they came into the US capital building and so the denial to say that no no no parlor wasn't being used by these people going into the US capital building like clearly false because you can see from the Geo dat of the posts where they were when they posted to parlor so again like this is one of the situations that we're going to see more of in the future about privacy and security especially when it comes to these social networking apps and services so I'll put a link to that Gizmodo article and show notes seeing the map is is a pretty interesting uh display of you know being able to use this data for something that is just there just an interesting development I would say in this whole parlor thing so I'm quite spooked by that but I'm going to say maybe for all we know people were posting recipes and Cat videos uh to paror and they just happened to be doing it uh in Nancy Pelosi's office I mean they could happen it's possible sure we all yeah we all know how many cats are at the US capital building it's just overrun with cats exactly something must be done about the cats that's that's the thing yes and so the last thing we had a listener question and we'd love to have more of this as you listen to the podcast if you have questions about anything and this question actually came from Dan on Twitter and he was asking me about mesh Wi-Fi networks and if I have any recommendations about that there he has actually an AirPort Extreme and express which I had the old Airport Express as well I loved that and you know if Apple ever wants to in all the different areas that is getting into product-wise they want to get back into Wi-Fi routers I'm not going to be mad I'll be honest and get mesh Wi-Fi but for the current state of mesh Wi-Fi networks one I would look at the things that were announced at CES there are Wi-Fi 6E routers that are now announced that will be available even as early as February of this year Wi-Fi 6E is even faster and has more robust features for Wi-Fi 6 Apple devices don't support Wi-Fi 6E just yet but surely future Apple devices will so if you really want a future proof I would look at some of those Wi-Fi 6E mesh routers I really like the routers that are coming from lynus their velop line of routers which they announced a 6E version is coming soon I personally have the lyus velop Wi-Fi 6 router mesh Network it is not inexpensive you know it is pricey especially if you're getting multiple nodes but I have found the Wi-Fi 6 performance to be incredible especially on my Apple devices that have Wi-Fi 6 I get just as fast speeds wired to ethernet as being Wi-Fi on my iPhone so pretty incredible but the Linkus velop mesh Network system is great also the Netgear Orbeez system has gotten really positive reviews there is the EO line and I was really positive on ero before it was bought by Amazon now that ero is owned by Amazon I'm a little more hesitant to recommend that as far as the privacy and security thing but if you're also looking for homekit to be on routers again I go back to the lynx's velop they've brought homekit already to several of their mesh Network router lines and they've announced that it's going to be coming to more of their velop routers so if you want homekit in a router and you really want a great Wi-Fi mesh Network I do recommend the lynxis velop system do you have a a mesh Network or what do you use for Wi-Fi uh we use chewing gum and some string it's actually earlier this week as we record this uh we lost all internet because apparent there was some work outside and workmen cut through the cables m it's my favorite uh they managed to replace it later but I was actually in the middle of a zoom conference at the time and I was about to work for Apple Insider and I then had to host a workshop in the evening for a couple of hours so all in all it was quite a pale kind of day uh for me but uh for what it's worth part of the fix was cuz they can't come into a house because of lockdown conditions they passed a wire through with their test equipment on and I had to crawl under our stairways to find our c phone point oh my good and as I was getting there it was like a sitcom moment with just a comedically different intervals something would drop down on my head and I I am convinced that Angela was behind me just giggling and letting go every now and again wow but yeah whatever it was I plugged in it helped them confirm that it didn't work and then they fin oh my goodness so that's it I I have actually genuinely today I've been wondering whether mesh would help me because even though they fix that and Angela's work is fine uh I'm further away from the Writ and I lost connection again for bid I had to tether for no apparent reason for a few minutes and things so I've been wondering about ringing wires or meshing and this makes me think that meshing might be is meshing the word is the is there a verb meshing yeah yeah you can you can you can use that as a verb meshing okay and that's what I have like I I don't have ethernet run to my second mesh node and it's like just to Totally Wireless just pluged into power so and I find the the mesh really works well even if I'm far away from the node that's current connected directly to ethernet I still get great speeds like far on the other side of the house so yeah highly recommend the the mesh thing well listeners thanks for joining us this week we would love to hear from you on Twitter you can tweet at William Gallagher and myself our Twitter handles are in the show notes we'd love to hear from you send us your questions your comments if you got some apple setup you know if you have a desk set up if you're using some docking station like I talked about earlier I would love to see it you can tweet a picture at us you can also email us that link is in show notes as well if you haven't yet we would greatly appreciate a festar rating and review in apple podcast a couple of you did that this past week and we really appreciate it and don't forget to check out The homid Insider podcast that comes out every Monday and apple Insider daily where you can get all the headlines from Apple in just 3 to 5 minutes every day you can check out links in show notes to those podcasts as well thanks for joining us this week we'll catch you next timewelcome to the Apple Insider podcast this episode is brought to you by Amazon Pharmacy learn more at amazon.com appleinsider RX and we're brought to you by headspace get a free one-month trial when you go to headspace.com slapple Insider and finally the nebia by Mo and Spa shower get 15% off nebia products right now if you go to neb.com slapple Insider welcome to the Apple Insider podcast this is your host Steven roblas and joining me this week is my Apple Fitness Plus partner in crime from across the pond William Gallagher right I I was going to ask is it too late to say happy new year but after that Apple Fitness dig no forget it hello that's all you're getting well I'll say Happy New Year to you and uh we are friends on on activity but I've not been following it I will I will admit fully here on the podcast I've done Apple Fitness plus you can count on one hand the amount of times I've done it this year it's it's not been very much how about you okay you can count on two two fingers two fingers okay that's more than one that's pretty good for very good reasons I have been much more active so far this year I've been filling out those exercise circles and I Will Not Waste an exercise Circle by doing more than it said it's not the target it's the limit now now by more activity is it like rolling the chair around the office or is there something else you're doing here uh I'm sure how could you accuse me of I found a way to cheat would you believe but do I share it with you or not you can keep it a mystery I won't press you okay it might involve a local dog running around but that's very good very good well nice to have you for this episode in 2021 so let's touch on some of the news you know this past week Tim Cook actually said on CBS on the morning show that he had a big announcement coming they announced what apple is going to be doing in regards to R equality and justice what they're going to be investing in some new initiatives and so I'll touch on a couple key points William had the article and so I let him go into a little more details but they're contributing $25 million to create a Propel Center in conjunction with Southern Company that's going to be in Atlanta University Center of 50,000 ft space for learning labs and lecture Halls they're also going to open an apple developer Academy in Detroit this is the first time a company has created a training center in collaboration with Michigan State University they're hoping for a th000 students annually and they're also investing $10 million with New York's Harlem Capital which aims to support a th new companies over the next two decades help entrepreneurs and so these are awesome initiatives in the renderings in the article of the buildings that they're contributing to these are some beautiful buildings so you had the article what any more details you have on that there's one detail I'm actually oddly not sure about and not able to find out from Apple yet although we are asking uh the 100 million that they're spending now can't tell if it's on top of the 100 million that they pledged in I think it was June 2020 or whether this is um the Fulfillment of that uh But whichever it is the thing that I like most about is that none of it is one off donate to charity take the qos and run it's all about starting things that are intended to run the developer Academy in Detroit they're expecting to have uh get up to about a thousand students every year and it isn't for just one year isn't for two it's just you that's it long as it keeps running and uh also actually speaking of Detroit the fact that they're uh they're opening that but just before they open it uh they are holding um like a virtual um passing out cery I can't think of the right phrase uh for the first cohort that went through its uh entrepreneur camp for black Founders and developers it was a started a few months ago and it's come to fruition and now they're on to other things so I I like this business of these are important things and we are in it for the long haul that's what I plus those renders of the Propel Center they look amazing you want to go there don't yes I do it it does it looks beautiful so they'll link to show notes to this it'll be the first one in those links and you can check out the renderings but very cool and just awesome that apple is contributing those things in various areas well this week was also CES 2021 Andrew O'Hara at Apple Insider I think he has like a 100 hours of Zoom calls logged because that's what CES was this year was just all Zoom calls and press releases and obviously a lot of devices were announced and a lot of accessories check out The homekit Insider episode coming Mondays we talk about a lot of the home stuff that was announced there was actually a lot of devices there but I want to touch on just two or three of the products that I really found interesting that was announced at CES one LG announced the first OLED 4K Ultra fine display and I'm going to talk about my experience with ultrafine because I actually have one now and a new desk setup I'm going to talk about in a few minutes but LG announc its first OLED 4K Ultra fine display so this display from LG is 31 1/2 in which is very similar to Apple's Pro display xdr which is 32 in so same physical dimensions but this display from LG is 4K Apple's Pro display xdr is 6k so if you're looking for that retina quality High pixel density screen and a large screen size this is not going to be competing with that Pro display xdr just yet but if you're good with 4K and you want to try out the new OLED technology this one from LG looks pretty good and I will say LG's displays are pretty nice uh as I'll talk about in a moment but that was interesting also these were really cool ankor unveiled a new accessory lineup they have some mag safe cases they're going to be releasing and some mag safe charging stands but one of the cool things that they announced were these battery packs that will actually attach to the back of your iPhone 12 via magsafe and it can wirelessly charge your phone through that connection and I thought that was really cool you know I was wondering if someone was going to do this soon and Anor seems the first one to Market and so I've you know used portable battery packs in the past some from ankor some from Mofi but to be able to just slap a battery pack onto the back of your iPhone and it's charging it immediately you don't need you don't need any cables or need to worry about that I thought that was pretty cool so those some interesting accessories there I actually really fancy that I've just got I was given for Christmas a MAG safe thing and the so satisfying the sound as it Go the physical sound and then the the the note that apple pays they chose that well it's really you just like doing it but yeah a lot of Anchor batteries things I have one right next to me uh that I rely on back in the days when we used to travel so been able to do this oh wait a minute this is at CES nothing at CES ever actually comes out does it really no no wait a minute wait a minute I mean anchor is pretty reputable I feel like true I trust them yes yeah this is not a it's not vaporware just yet but and then this last thing I want toh talk about you know Wes was excited about this this thing looks really cool Kensington announced the studio dock for iPad Pro and iPad Air the new version of the air and this thing it looks really sweet so it basically looks like the stand for Apple's Pro display xdr it's like that nice aluminum looking clean looking stand and then what it has is a place for you to make magnetically attach your iPad and connect it via the USBC port and then this stand has many other ports that are now available to the iPad it also has a chi charging pads for your phone and airpods right at the base of the stand but then on the back of this stand from Kensington there's like usba a ports HDMI if you want to connect a display headphone jack and then an ethernet port as well so if you use your iPad for work mainly you really enjoy working from that and Wes Hillyard he was on the show last week he works from iPad first this thing looks really sweet it's not available yet you can go on the website I'll put a link in show notes and you can sign up to be made notified when it is available but it looks really sweet you can also rotate an iPad horizontal and vertical on the Kensington stand and so again connecting it to an external monitor plus all the other connections on the stand looks pretty sweet so you know when I'm finally to send my iPad Pro to you William I you might be interested in this I was building up to asking you about that again but now your head I'm getting there closer yes you've G you've gas lit me enough gas lighted gas lit me enough whichever one of those but uh very cool very cool device and so again you could sign up to be notified there so I'll put links and show notes to those products again a lot of stuff at CES announced not available just yet some of their homekit products are available like vocal link humidifier and things like that again check out The homekit Insider episode Monday for some of those specific devices and links and show notes to what I talked about just now this episode is brought to you by Amazon Pharmacy listener let me tell you I literally order from Amazon all the time especially during this time of pandemic and staying home I think that Amazon Prime guy is at my house almost every day and I did not know about this but Amazon actually has an Amazon pharmacy program where you can get your prescriptions and medic s delivered directly to your door Amazon Pharmacy is super easy to use you can have your doctor's office just send your prescription straight to Amazon Pharmacy and it will be delivered right to your door you can use your insurance and Amazon Pharmacy works with most insurance plans Nationwide and Amazon Prime members get free two-day delivery and you can save on prescription medications when paying without insurance maybe your insurance doesn't cover it or you don't have the insurance right now you can save on those prescriptions with an Amazon Prime membership I've worked with my doctors and healthc Care Professionals to send prescriptions to Amazon Pharmacy and it's super easy they send it on and then you get the medication directly to your door Amazon Pharmacy will coordinate with your doctor to receive the prescriptions and it's just as convenient as shopping on Amazon for everything else it's one less errand you don't have to go to the pharmacy you don't have to drop off a prescription or go pick it up it arrives at your door and you're done it works with most insurance plans Nationwide and again when you're that Amazon Prime member you get free two-day delivery and savings on prescription medications when you're paying without insurance they make it very easy to see the difference paying with and without insurance when you check out so you have all the information visible and easy to understand again Amazon Prime members you can save on prescription medications when not using insurance and get free two-day delivery learn more at amazon.com slapple inssider RX that's all one word am a z n amazon.com appleinsider RX amazon.com appleinsider RX to try out Amazon Pharmacy our thanks to Amazon Pharmacy for sponsoring this episode I want to discuss my new desk setup and so last week I was talking to Wes Hillyard and trying to figure out I want to be able to dock my M1 MacBook Pro and use it obviously as a laptop away from the desk but then have a nice desk setup with mouse keyboard and the large display was trying to figure out what display I wanted to get you know contemplating what's best to use with a Mac so I actually got all the stuff in between last episode and now and I currently have the 4K LG ultra fine display I got one renewed I mentioned it on last week's episode you can get them on Amazon refurbished or renewed basically new to me is someone that looks great and there's no blemishes no spots on it so it looks great so I'm using the LG ultra fine 4K at that's 24 in and then I also got the bridge vertical dock bridge is BR r y dge the bridge vertical dock for the 13-in MacBook Pro which the bridge dock is really cool cuz it has two Thunderbolt 3 ports coming out the back of the dock so when you put your MacBook Pro in it you still get two ports coming out just like if you were connecting it directly to your Macbook so that's cool and so I have one cable going to the LG ultra fine and then I have another where I can put a dock for all the other connections that I need so I have the LG ultrafine 4K the vertical Bridge Dock and then been trying out various keyboards and mouse combinations and I'll talk about that in a minute but I have to say it is really nice to just be able to take my MacBook Pro out of my bag stick it in the vertical Dock and I'm immediately feels like I'm at sitting at a desktop computer I have my mouse keyboard and all that big display and everything's connected that I need to and it's been really nice so we had a listener suggest you know other monitors Wes and I were trying to figure out what are the best monitors to use with the Mac listener recommended a Ben Q monitor a design view which does look really nice I'll put a link in show notes to that but I went with the LG ultra fine it's nice because there's all USBC ports on the back two of them being Thunderbolt so I've attached things like that whether I need to charge or just an accessory and it's been great I will say the bridge vertical dock when I initially hooked it up to the LG ultra fine I put my MacBook Pro in there and you know I was expecting it to be really really precise as far as putting the MacBook in and like not being much wiggle room but there is a gap between the MacBook Pro and kind of the edge around this part of the dock so it's not like super airtight fit but it's pretty secure and then the vertical dock it actually has this piece inside that goes up and down it like moves up and down when you put your MacBook in and I was unsure how far down I needed to push it in order for the two USBC port to connect to the connections in the dock and so when I first tried it I thought I put it all the way down but it wasn't connecting to the LG display so I had to take the MacBook out connect it directly to the display make sure everything was working and then I found that the bridge vertical dock when you put your MacBook Pro in it you kind of push it down pretty firmly and then you hear a click which means that both of those ports are now in the MacBook Pro 13in and it is connected and then it pops up on the LG ultra fine and all that so that was just a little if you do get a bridge vertical dock you know don't be afraid to kind of push down on it a little firmly to make sure it actually makes the connection but it's been a nice experience I've enjoyed sitting at a desk and feeling like I have a desktop Mac uh there is where one obvious thing missing uhhuh what's that a photograph you can't just dangle all this you want see it in action sounds great yes very good let me send you if I'm particularly taken with that business about uh the dock not being very firm for it cuz aren't there some where you buy it but then there are like little inserts to fit whether you've got an MacBook Air or MacBook Pro or something is that I I thinking of a completely different well for this bridge sells a dock for every specific size so if you're going to buy a vertical dock from bridge you have to tell it what year and what model and what size so if you have a 16-inch MacBook Pro that's a different dock that you would purchase from the drop down if you have a 13-in air as opposed to a pro that's a different vertical dock so it is very specific to your model and it doesn't come with any inserts it's just you screw in the bottom base plate and you're good to go and that's it and so I just sent you a picture William so you can see the setup yes and uh you appear to work in an Apple store that's what this looks like to me if you got one of those great desks well this is a desk of a co-working space I'm actually at so it is not a home office per se yeah it's a it's a co-working space which and time of pandemic has actually been pretty quiet so it is kind of an ideal situation but that that's the setup now so some quirks though as I have explored this setup you know I've seen people tweeting about Bluetooth issues on M1 Max and I thought they were all crazy because I was not experiencing it but it's because I wasn't trying to connect multiple bluetooth devices simultaneously to my M1 MacBook Pro so when I tried this setup for the first time I was using a Bluetooth magic keyboard a Bluetooth Magic Mouse and then I tried to connect my airpods Max to the MacBook and no dice just circled and circled would not connect for anything even restarting the MacBook I wasn't able to get them all to connect at the same time and even between the keyboard and the mouse I had some connectivity intermittent issues where I would lose connection to the mouse sometimes and that was pretty frustrating and this was like the first time I was using it this was not like it worked great for a couple days and then I experienced this this was like day one Bluetooth issues with this setup so Apple has said that they're going to be releasing a fix in Mac OS Big Sir coming very soon but I will say it makes this setup actually kind of difficult to use at times with the magic keyboard I can connect it directly with a lightning to USBC cable if I want to connect the keyboard directly I don't have a magic Trackpad at this desk so I can't as you all well know I can't plug in the Magic Mouse and use it at the same time because charging port is conveniently placed on the underside of the Magic Mouse so there are sometimes like I I have to choose what Bluetooth device I'm going to connect if I have connect with the magic mouse sometimes I have to use my airpods Macs with like my iPad and listen to something through there because it just will not connect to the Macbook so the Bluetooth is definitely an issue when you're trying to connect multiple devices and Hope hopefully that fix comes very soon I know there's betas released for Big Sir recently but yeah that that can be a frustrating other than the Bluetooth issues I will say it is really nice the other thing is with Touch ID you know obviously when I'm using my MacBook with just as the computer not docked the touch ID is super convenient for logging in and passwords Apple pay all that kind of stuff when it's docked like that sometimes I can use the Apple watch to authenticate so when I want to unlock it it will use the Apple watch that I'm wearing and it'll unlock automatically and I don't have to put in the password but for some apps like one password where would normally just ask for my fingerprint to unlock one password I actually have to type in the password because there is no like Apple watch connection where I can unlock one password with my Apple watch so you know you lose that touch ID convenience in some situations I would still love to see one day I don't know if this is even possible but a magic keyboard with Touch ID or some kind of Authentication where you can have that even with the lid closed and be able to use that on something like an iMac as well if face ID doesn't come first to that so that's a little Quirk there but overall I do I like the setup and it's been working well I'm kind of a much more a software guy than a hardware one but I I visited an engineer once does a Keo thing really interesting guy terribly interesting product and he took me through I think actually just gave me a sort of surface guide but it felt like an in-depth guide to precisely how hard Bluetooth tooth is to work and the standards that vary and all this it just it came thinking this is alchemy it is not why do we have to have this nonsense how did it become this fragile thing that is cu I have Bluetooth issues uh just randomly and I I I don't I'm wondering now if it's multiple devices because I I didn't know that was the M1 problem I'm going to have to check out what I'm doing with this but it appeared to be just you in the middle of a sentence my cuboard will go nah not going to bother with that right and then come back later when want it so okay yeah throw sugar over your shoulder and get wired uh devices okay noted right yes exactly and that's you know if I get a magic Trackpad I could use it but I actually don't prefer the magic Trackpad over the mouse when I'm using a desktop which which do you prefer you like the trackpad or you go with the mouse the trackpad bu a incredibly long way uh I find mice really quite awkward to use I get that you can be more precise you know pixel for Pixel clicking with the eyes but even when I'm doing uh basic illustration work I don't need it I find the the magic trap pad is just amazing when I go to a Mac that has even an older trackpad uh I miss it plus I am a veteran of the hockey puck Mouse I used it on one for one day at the BBC and everybody was looking at me waiting to it was like this hot desk spare Mac and all of the art department and this magazine were waiting for me to swear so I used it because yeah it was a right of passage at this time and and I did and it was horrible so that put me off mice me 20 years ago um and then I found the trackpad about 10 years ago and I just cannot go back to it at all so you can I'll keep my trackpad you keep the mouse but we'll still do the deal about the iPad you take the high road I'll take the low road no but I like the trackpad a lot and obviously I use it on my MacBook Pro I love that trackpad but I found sitting at a desk using a trackpad for an extended period of time especially if I'm editing a video I found like my hand I don't know I would I would have this tension in my hand trying to like hold my hand above the trackpad constantly and only put my fingers down when I meant to and it just I not carpal tunnel or RSI maybe it was an RSI thing but using the trackpad for an extended period of time I just found it it not comfortable for my hands so it was more of a comfort thing you know I do like how many multif figured gestures you get with the trackpad four fingers three fingers and all that and I use all those on my my MacBook but something about that video editing with a magic Trackpad I it just didn't uh didn't work for me so that's why I'm sticking with the uh the mice no no no hang on a second but you audio edit on an iPad so you must be constantly touching and dragging there and yet you don't feel that same uh tension well it's all apple pencil on there oh I see I just I'm thinking assuming it's p right okay that's very swish sitting in a in a coffee shop your artistic apple pencil at your hand dabbing away at the screen and editing audio that's right that's the life it we I want to go back to doing that yes it it is nice and that's you know this co-working space that I'm at again because there's not many people around now I do have the couches at my choice and I could sit there and edit a podcast and it's nice and I look like an artist cuz I'm using a pencil but I'm not you just I'm editing a podcast this episode is brought to you by headspace well we're in a new year but it's looking like there's still some stressful events going on in our world today and maybe you made a New Year's resolution to not watch the news as much or to help you get de-stressed or not feel so overwhelmed well let me tell you from personal experience that I highly recommend you try headspace to add that mindfulness to your day and help relieve some of that stress you may be feeling headspace is your daily dose of mindfulness in the form of guided meditations in an easyto use app and listen if you're intimidated by the word meditation let me tell you I had not done it before until I use the headspace app one it's an awesome app beautifully designed easy to use walks you through every step and it eases you in teaching you how to do it and it has been incredibly valuable to my daily life headspace is one of the only meditation apps advancing the field of mindfulness and meditation through clinically validated research so whatever your situation headspace can really help you feel better if you feel overwhelmed headspace has a 3-minute SOS meditation for you it's just 3 minutes super easy to do maybe you need help falling asleep well headspace has a wind down session that members swear by and for parents headspace even has morning meditations you can do with your kids heads space's approach to mindfulness can reduce stress improve sleep boost focus and increase your overall sense of well-being and I want to tell you personally that I can get overwhelmed at times when I look at my to-do list especially in the morning and if that list just got longer overnight I'm checking emails in the morning taking those few minutes right at the start of the day can really help put your mind at ease help you get ready to focus on that task list and you can approach the day not starting stressed out and it makes such a difference heads space is back by 25 published studies on its benefits 600,000 f-star reviews and over 60 million downloads headspace makes it easy for you to build a life-changing meditation practice with mindfulness that works for you on your schedule anytime and anywhere you deserve to feel happier and headspace is meditation Made Simple go to headspace.com slapple Insider that's headspace just like it sounds.com slapple Insider for a free one-month trial you can try it for an entire month and you get access to heads space's full library of meditations for every situation including those beginner type lessons to really get you acclimated to mindfulness and meditation this is the best deal offered right now go to headspace.com slapple inssider today our thanks to headspace for sponsoring this episode so I also wanted to mention is we were talking about devices with mag safe and charging you know Andrew O'Hara reviewed the Belin 3 in1 mag safe charger and I couldn't resist I I picked one up and just real quick I have to say it is really sweet I had the magsafe duo where you can charge your iPhone and Apple watch from Apple it's Apple's product but man the belon 3 in one really takes ma safe to the next level I wasn't sure how I would like my phone just kind of d Ling in midair because of the mag safe the belcon one it's like kind of high up and your phone is just not vertical it's at maybe like a 30° angle or something but it is super secure my phone stays on there charging overnight and I don't worry about it coming off at all you can put it vertical or horizontal on that charging plate and that's pretty sweet the Apple watch same thing it hangs up there in midair but really secure the magnets charges overnight and then it has that third place for your airpods or airpods Pro where you can charge it via cheat charging right there on the base so yeah I have to say it's a really sweet and I understand why Andrew gave it a five out of five stars so if you haven't gotten that mag safe Duo and you want to get mag safe a MAG safe charger for your nightstand or maybe your desk and you're looking at the different options that belon 3 in one is really sweet the white one is in stock and ships pretty quickly I got mine in just a couple days uh the there's a black version coming but I think that's February shipping time uh for that so that's pretty cool so you said you got a MAG safe thing for Christmas you get the puck I got the the apples kind of regular uh on so they're quite long lead and uh uh yeah the puck thing for it which is currently by my bed but I had it by my desk for a bit and and now I kind of want them in both spots so maybe I have buy the Belin thing you might have to though you were really quick getting it I mean I last I heard they were delayed and then suddenly they were out and you got one straight away that's oh Apple must love you isn't it service it's Steven send it down that's right ship it wait no it was I bought it through the Apple Store and so I think that was the trick you know there was wasn't sure if it was going to be available January 8th if it was going to be delayed and so I just checked the Apple Store January 8th when it was rumored to be available and boom it was there and then you know if you switch between the black and white color in the Apple Store app you do see the shipping times change the black one was like 3 to four weeks so went over to the white and got like next day shipping so if you want it check it out in the Apple Store yeah it's pretty nice uh it doesn't appear to be available in the UK Apple store yet unfortunately oh okay sorry across the pond there tantalized again yeah now what is the status currently on the physical Apple stores in the UK are they all still closed they're all closed um and um I don't believe there's an exception for Apple but most places are not even doing click and collect uh at the moment so it's just shuttered completely uh not for very much longer well in theory uh about February the 15th I think it is that uh things are supposed to come out of lockdown again but we don't know if that'll be extended further unfortunately gotcha well yeah I'm sorry for those I know I saw you know a couple weeks ago that everything was shutting down and so they haven't given like a estimated things might open up at this time you said February 15th uh Apple hasn't said anything they're just following uh government guidelines uh the trouble is I don't mean to knock the government here but the guidelines change so I mean from day to day they are radically different to the extent that we're kind of numb to it now and it's just uh we check in the morning can we go out yet no and carry on I I think it's highly likely that the lockdown will continue further than the 14th or 15 whichever one it is but officially we're still expected to be free of it by then gotcha I was having such a lovely time talking about key charges and um ma safe and now you have to bring in the real world sorry sorry I know well we'll talk about the real world again later because you say you want to talk bad about your government we had quite a number of events over here in the US and how that relates to technology is interes yeah you may have heard you may have heard maybe but before we get to all that iOS 14.4 beta a new beta was released and we talk about on the H kid Insider as well but if you have a homepod mini which I know you do William or at least your wife does I don't know if you guys share it does she share it with you or does she say don't touch my homepod I I think I told you I was buying her one for Christmas I I caved and gave it to her early cuz I got it straight away right and it was in my office and I just couldn't do it I had to give it to her so then obviously had to think about a new Christmas present and actually she separately got a home po Min from someone else so we have two um and we have discovered the Delights of uh intercom through it through th those two that are around the house and the hom pod next to me and we finding that remarkably useful so yes very keen on anything to do with homepod minis uh I now want one for the kitchen but you know there's a limit you got to stop somewhere sure I definitely want to hear about that your intercom experience too that's that's very interesting but with iOS 14.4 beta there is an update for the homepod mini that will be coming that utilizes the U1 Ultra wideband chip in both the homepod mini and the iPhone 12s I believe the iPhone 11s also have the U1 Ultra wideband and you'll be able to hand off audio from your phone to homod mini and back much more quickly more secure and easily and using the ultra wideband so when 14.4 comes out publicly if you have a homepod mini and an iPhone 11 or 12 should try off that handoff feature Andrew has an article and a video talking about that so I'll put that in show notes and also in iOS 14.4 there was updates to the find my app and there's a new splash screen when you open find my for the first time in iOS 14.4 and it talks about the ability to include other devices into the fine my app and again with the long rumored and still waiting to hear about air tags there's actually a URL scheme that was discovered where if you put in like the Safari web browser on your iPhone and you type find my colon backb SL items into Safari it triggers a URL scheme that opens the find my app to a find my items screen so right now if you open the find my app and you're on the public release of 14.3 you know you could see other members of your family or other friends that you may have accepted to share location with and you can see your devices in there and this looks like it's going to be adding additional items even third part party items Belin is actually going to be using this tracking service so they'll be included in the fine my the new belon wireless earbuds you'll be able to use it in the find my app so it really looks like this air tags that one day will hopefully come out sometime soon and so we can stop talking about when they're going to come or if they're going to come but I find it interesting I would look forward to having these kinds of devices maybe tile could even integrate with this in 14.4 so you can see your tile items in the f my app I think that'd be pretty cool so you said you've been using intercom on your homepod Minis and I'm curious how is that experience been what is your like starting phrase for when you're wanting to send a message from homepod mini to homepod mini and how does it come across how's that been working for you um I know there are always direct an intercome to a particular um home mini but I can't I can never remember what that is so I just say the magic words and then intercom and whatever want or I tried it the one time I went outside had to go essential Journey under lockdown when I was coming back uh I was using uh my wife car has carplay and I was couldn't resist it I tried into come through that and just told her I was on the way back and I did that by saying an ounce to everyone and it worked for it um I it's silly to think that we're not exactly in a big house but the walls are pretty thick so it's very handy to be able to just say be odd thing like the bath is ready or food's coming or whatever um and have know that it's got there we had a bit of an issue that um uh I was trying to record something and I got an intercom announcement through the homepod here so I actually read a feature for an apple Insider on how to stop that happening temporarily you know like make your own do not disturb for homepod or homepod mini but other than that it's been um just it's like it's become part of our normal existence very quickly wow so yes it's been remarkable considering that I couldn't stand the old walkie-talkie over what is for the that reason that it was forever interrupting when you in places you really didn't want to be interrupted uh I'm I'm I surprised I even tried intercom but now that I have uh utterly sold do you guys ever reply after an intercom is sent and how do you do that oh it's no point yes we often do uh oh I think what we do is I know there is a direct reply function but we just tend to say intercom again uh because although supposed there are three homeb two homeb me there's only two of us in the house for it um and I phones and things if we just basically announce the reply and know that we'll get it yes I should be doing a direct reply to whatever device has been sending it okay you see there's more to explore in this and I'm already used to it as it is okay thanks i' I've only used it a couple times but I don't know I always forget exactly what to say so I guess you kind of have to use it regularly to get used to it so I might I might try that I see the intercom option everywhere even on my Apple watch you know if you open the home app you see that intercom thing at the top so yeah I'm going have to try that soon I think it's interesting that I can't remember what you have to say and neither can you but in your case it's CU you haven't used it mine it's because it's become become second nature I'm not using it enough I should change it but yeah definitely try it out and join us you're right I thought I thought you could say like broadcast you know like so hey Dingus broadcast and then say something after that well I know there's hey Iris that's say away I'm going to say that rather than Dingus hey Iris Iris intercome uh or announce I think there's also a tell I think there was one time when a message I I sent the message began with Angela's name um and it said I can't send it to a particular person or something like that and there's one point where actually as a gag Angela sent me a text uh saying she needed the the URL for a zoom meeting and I couldn't resist it I I sent her an intercom announcement and I said over it h easy to just tell you https colon on slashers and I was only going to go a few letters into it and then admit yeah you know how long Zoom links are and I thought this would be fun stop looking at me it was funny at the time except for some reason uh the intercom did not relay that message at all didn't just stop after I spoke and began the the URL it didn't relay the message at all so she came up about 10 minutes later going duh where's the frustr me actually cuz it did there's no like cue to tell you it stopped listening really no there's another yet another nice Apple sound when it begins listening but then you just stop and look at it for a moment or at least I used to it first now I say it and my mind's gone back to whatever else I'm working on until or if I get a reply right right for sure interesting well I'll try more often we'll report back next time we're on together this episode is brought to you by the nebba by Moen Spa shower you've heard me talk about nebia before and I've been using the SP shower for months now and I absolutely love it from the design to the spa-like experience in the shower this thing is incredible nebia started in Mexico City where water shortages were a big problem they came to Silicon Valley to raise money and Tim Cook was one of nebba's First Investors the Apple CEO nebia was developed by former Tesla apple and NASA Engineers to create a superior shower experience while saving water and get this nebia has currently saved over 75 million gallons of water so let me tell you about the shower the nebby Moen Spa shower is incredibly easy to install I'm not a very do-it-yourself guy but the instructions they give you with all the right parts and pieces it really only took me about 15 minutes to swap out my old shower with the nebie B Mo and Spa shower it looks beautiful it comes in several different finishes I have the nickel fingerprint resistant finish and it just looks great in the shower but the best part is the shower experience I have the nebia B Mo and spot shower and the wand that comes with it and it just envelops you with water it's really like a spa-like experience and I got this term from them the thermal Comfort level meaning how hot it gets is great even my kids love it they've been using it just as long as I have and they never get tired of that shower experience I love that it's height adjustable so you can raise and lower that top shower head you can even go to nebba's website and they have a calculator that will tell you based on your location how much you will save in money when using the nebia B Spa shower because it saves water and saves you money it actually saves 45% of water compared to other standard showers but it has two times greater coverage and this is nebba's most advanced and affordable shower yet starting at just $1.99 again the nibia B Mo and Spa shower comes in four finishes and you can also get this really cool shower shelf to match you can hang your little lofas and sponges and put your shampoos on top of it it looks great so right now there's 15% off nebia products for list listeners of the Apple Insider podcast nebia doesn't usually do sales so this is a great opportunity to jump on it go to neb.com slapple Insider take a look at all their products and then use the coupon code Apple Insider all one word when checking out that's nebia neb a.com slapple Insider and then use the promo code Apple Insider when you check out our thanks to nibia for sponsoring this episode and so I wanted to point out these funny things from Samsung Samsung announced their new S21 Galaxy phone lines and a couple hilarious points one when Samsung tweeted about the unpacked event the promotion they tweeted it from an iPhone and I feel like social media managers and PR people everywhere for some reason still do not understand that when you tweet from a device you can see on Twitter what device was used to tweet that thing and so this tweet the Samsung unpacked event such and such it was tweeted January 13 2021 with Twitter for iPhone and this is just hilarious I know there's actually been cases in the past I think it was Oprah and somebody else they were talking about how much they love the Microsoft Surface and then they you know love this other thing and it's tweeted from iPhone it's like you know we just know the truth we know for some reason when it's an announcement like this and you know it's a PR Company that did it I'm kind I feel for them because it's like you know they're doing their job and they just didn't think about this bit but when it's a celebrity endorsement and they're gushing about how much they like something and then in the next unless they're trying to send us a coded message the fact that they are not using that uh I'm under duress yes it is maybe they're trying to say that they're in danger I don't know also with Samsung releasing these new phones The Verge and others actually confirmed that even after Apple announced that no power brick was coming with the iPhone 12's and Samsung saying oh no we include our power brick we're not like those guys now with the S21 line it's confirmed that Samsung is also leaving out the power brick from their phone boxes so again just a hilarious the thing the sole thing that youan you could almost put a clock on how long it is between Samsung mocking and Samsung emulating but where is Samsung TV plus that's the one thing I thought they the money to get into and yet they we're just leaving that one alone for now yeah I I mean I'll be honest I don't know I don't want to see a a Samsung Galaxy TV plus content I don't know what that would be it would be all reality shows no I don't know but that would be no thank you no thank you well speaking of stuff that was happening in the US last week and up till now how it relates to technology you know I want to talk about parlor just for a moment parlor is the social network that came about just recently at probably earlier this year maybe last year but is largely conservatives and conservative talk show host posts and personalities on there and they struggled with moderation meaning they were not moderating a lot of comments and there was a lot of dangerous comments and violence inducing comments talking about just really terrible things so the app Apple and Google actually told parlor that unless they start instituting stronger moderation practices that they were going to be taken out of the app store and they did not change the moderation practices parlor didn't even after the January 6th event here in the capital of Washington DC and so Apple and Google removed parlor from the app stor so you cannot download parlor if you did not already have it on your phone even at the time of this recording at the end of this week so January 15th you cannot get parlor downloaded from the app store or Google Play Store but even more so even though it was removed from the App Stores if you if someone had it on their phone they could continue to use it until and Amazon who runs the AWS Amazon web services parlor was using Amazon as the backend to power the app and all the servers Amazon made the same threat meaning you know change your moderation or we're going to shut it down again without changing Amazon also followed through just like Apple and Google but this time shutting down parlor Amazon web services meaning even with the app on your phone when you opened it there was nothing there because the web services is the back end was non-existent Amazon shut it down and so parlor is trying to sue Amazon with this you know because they took away or censorship and they are trying to find another service provider for the back server side stuff I just found this incredibly interesting and then you know talking to certain people seeing people comment on the internet there's really confusion on you know what is censorship which we won't get into a ton here but also like what companies did what I heard some people even say like apple shut down parlor because the headlines on the internet talking about Apple removing parlor from the App Store was somehow larger in the mind space of people and so they immediately assumed that Apple shut down parlor where in all honesty while they removed it from the app store they couldn't shut down the service it was actually Amazon who did because the web services were shut down so I just find it interesting the the confusion and kind of where blame goes in situations like this when people don't really understand like how an internet service or social network like parlor actually functions what it needs to function as far as like the web services side so it was an interesting tale there but it again is still shut down still you cannot download it from the app store or Google Play Store at the moment of this recording just interesting overall how that uh all went down well I think perhaps because I'm in the UK I had not even heard of paror until all of this broke and that makes me interested to how uh you know that we're all siloed in listening to the news that we're interested in or that we like or that says what we want to hear but that's an example where the existence of uh a new service if you like uh a messaging service of a particular persuasion uh totally escaped me because it's not something I'd ever use and I was quite shocked that something so big could be around that even I thought I was aware of these things and I'd missed it all so I I understand people not understanding if you see what I mean the whole chain of things suppose it's not anybody's job to know that AWS Powers everything but I think if one is um concerned enough to be angry about something one should be concerned enough to find out about it uh rather than just take the face value thing yeah I agree and just as a correction parlor actually was founded in 2018 so it's like two plus years old but it really just Rose to dominance or at least into the like public conversation in this last year because of all that's been going on here in the US and as of December 2020 before it was shut down it had about 2.3 million active users which you know if you compare that to the active Twitter users Twitter has about 36 million daily active users so you know nowhere near as big as even Twitter and then again you know Facebook over a billion users and all that so relatively small but definitely made a lot of noise at least here in the US so one last thing about parlor this was interesting Gizmodo had a report that was was actually showing the Geo tagged posts that people were posting to parlor on January 6 at and inside the capital building now again you know when we talk about privacy and security this is one of those things that you don't think about until after the fact but parlor did not encrypt the geolocation data for posts and even if you were to delete a post parlor was only marking that post as deleted it wasn't removing that post from its servers and so all the Geo data from Posts that were made on parlor on January 6th from people at the Capitol Building actually it was mapped by Gizmodo where you can see all these little red dots of people posting to parlor that day during the riots and you know during the people as as they came into the US capital building and so the denial to say that no no no parlor wasn't being used by these people going into the US capital building like clearly false because you can see from the Geo dat of the posts where they were when they posted to parlor so again like this is one of the situations that we're going to see more of in the future about privacy and security especially when it comes to these social networking apps and services so I'll put a link to that Gizmodo article and show notes seeing the map is is a pretty interesting uh display of you know being able to use this data for something that is just there just an interesting development I would say in this whole parlor thing so I'm quite spooked by that but I'm going to say maybe for all we know people were posting recipes and Cat videos uh to paror and they just happened to be doing it uh in Nancy Pelosi's office I mean they could happen it's possible sure we all yeah we all know how many cats are at the US capital building it's just overrun with cats exactly something must be done about the cats that's that's the thing yes and so the last thing we had a listener question and we'd love to have more of this as you listen to the podcast if you have questions about anything and this question actually came from Dan on Twitter and he was asking me about mesh Wi-Fi networks and if I have any recommendations about that there he has actually an AirPort Extreme and express which I had the old Airport Express as well I loved that and you know if Apple ever wants to in all the different areas that is getting into product-wise they want to get back into Wi-Fi routers I'm not going to be mad I'll be honest and get mesh Wi-Fi but for the current state of mesh Wi-Fi networks one I would look at the things that were announced at CES there are Wi-Fi 6E routers that are now announced that will be available even as early as February of this year Wi-Fi 6E is even faster and has more robust features for Wi-Fi 6 Apple devices don't support Wi-Fi 6E just yet but surely future Apple devices will so if you really want a future proof I would look at some of those Wi-Fi 6E mesh routers I really like the routers that are coming from lynus their velop line of routers which they announced a 6E version is coming soon I personally have the lyus velop Wi-Fi 6 router mesh Network it is not inexpensive you know it is pricey especially if you're getting multiple nodes but I have found the Wi-Fi 6 performance to be incredible especially on my Apple devices that have Wi-Fi 6 I get just as fast speeds wired to ethernet as being Wi-Fi on my iPhone so pretty incredible but the Linkus velop mesh Network system is great also the Netgear Orbeez system has gotten really positive reviews there is the EO line and I was really positive on ero before it was bought by Amazon now that ero is owned by Amazon I'm a little more hesitant to recommend that as far as the privacy and security thing but if you're also looking for homekit to be on routers again I go back to the lynx's velop they've brought homekit already to several of their mesh Network router lines and they've announced that it's going to be coming to more of their velop routers so if you want homekit in a router and you really want a great Wi-Fi mesh Network I do recommend the lynxis velop system do you have a a mesh Network or what do you use for Wi-Fi uh we use chewing gum and some string it's actually earlier this week as we record this uh we lost all internet because apparent there was some work outside and workmen cut through the cables m it's my favorite uh they managed to replace it later but I was actually in the middle of a zoom conference at the time and I was about to work for Apple Insider and I then had to host a workshop in the evening for a couple of hours so all in all it was quite a pale kind of day uh for me but uh for what it's worth part of the fix was cuz they can't come into a house because of lockdown conditions they passed a wire through with their test equipment on and I had to crawl under our stairways to find our c phone point oh my good and as I was getting there it was like a sitcom moment with just a comedically different intervals something would drop down on my head and I I am convinced that Angela was behind me just giggling and letting go every now and again wow but yeah whatever it was I plugged in it helped them confirm that it didn't work and then they fin oh my goodness so that's it I I have actually genuinely today I've been wondering whether mesh would help me because even though they fix that and Angela's work is fine uh I'm further away from the Writ and I lost connection again for bid I had to tether for no apparent reason for a few minutes and things so I've been wondering about ringing wires or meshing and this makes me think that meshing might be is meshing the word is the is there a verb meshing yeah yeah you can you can you can use that as a verb meshing okay and that's what I have like I I don't have ethernet run to my second mesh node and it's like just to Totally Wireless just pluged into power so and I find the the mesh really works well even if I'm far away from the node that's current connected directly to ethernet I still get great speeds like far on the other side of the house so yeah highly recommend the the mesh thing well listeners thanks for joining us this week we would love to hear from you on Twitter you can tweet at William Gallagher and myself our Twitter handles are in the show notes we'd love to hear from you send us your questions your comments if you got some apple setup you know if you have a desk set up if you're using some docking station like I talked about earlier I would love to see it you can tweet a picture at us you can also email us that link is in show notes as well if you haven't yet we would greatly appreciate a festar rating and review in apple podcast a couple of you did that this past week and we really appreciate it and don't forget to check out The homid Insider podcast that comes out every Monday and apple Insider daily where you can get all the headlines from Apple in just 3 to 5 minutes every day you can check out links in show notes to those podcasts as well thanks for joining us this week we'll catch you next time\n"